Field of the Disclosure
The present disclosure relates to wireless communication systems, for example, and more particularly to allocating time and frequency resources to a UL channel to carry uplink control information used for narrowband communication.
Description of Related Art
Wireless communication systems are widely deployed to provide various types of communication content such as voice, video, packet data, messaging, broadcast, and so on. These systems may be capable of supporting communication with multiple users by sharing the available system resources (e.g., time, frequency, and power). Examples of such multiple-access systems include code division multiple access (CDMA) systems, time division multiple access (TDMA) systems, frequency division multiple access (FDMA) systems, and orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) systems, (e.g., a Long Term Evolution (LTE) system or LTE-Advanced (LTE-A) system). A wireless multiple-access communication system may include a number of base stations, each simultaneously supporting communication for multiple communication devices, which may be otherwise known as user equipment (UE) devices. A base station may communicate with UE devices on downlink channels (e.g., for transmissions from a base station to a UE device) and uplink channels (e.g., for transmissions from a UE device to a base station).
Some types of UE devices may communicate with a base station or other UE devices using narrowband communication. Narrowband communication may include, for example, narrowband LTE (NB-LTE) communication, M2M communication (of which Machine Type Communication (MTC) may be considered a part for purposes of this disclosure), NB-Internet of Things (NB-IoT) communication, etc.). Given the narrow bandwidth of narrowband communication, choices may need to be made regarding the types of channels and signals to which narrowband resources are allocated, as well as the manner in which narrowband resources are allocated to such channels and signals and the configurations of such channels and signals.